Mparntwe (Alice Springs) seeks to address its dwindling visiting numbers by building the National Aboriginal Art Gallery (NAAG) on Anzac Oval in the the centre of town.
This cultural initiative aims to celebrate 65,000 years of Aboriginal culture while controversially construction will be on a sacred women’s site. Doris Stuart Kngwarreye is an Arrente woman who is a senior custodian or Apmereke-Artweye for Mparntwe, a role she inherited through her father’s line when she was young. Stuart has opposed the proposed gallery site for years as the gallery’s proposed artworks will overlap the sacred sites and song lines of the traditional owners.
“If you put a building up there with stories that don’t belong there, how do you think the ancestors will feel towards that?” she said.
The prospect not only concerns the ancestors but indigenous, living artists like Western Arrarnta elder and artist Mervyn Rubuntja. "It's a women's site," he said. "You need to talk to the ladies first if they say yes or no, because it's important for every non-indigenous person to listen."
Despite consultations and recommendations that the gallery should be built in the Desert Knowledge Precinct, the Arrente women have been ridden over roughshod by the Labour MP Chansey Paech who took over the Arts, Culture and Heritage portfolio for the Northern Territory in 2020. Mr Paech, an Arrernte man, said Ms Stuart and her family had been invited into the consultations "at every stage".
The NT government have been accused of traditional owner shopping for approval for the Anzac Oval site. As such, custodian families are being torn apart, particularly as some of them don’t hold authority of the land in question.
Rather ironically NAAG does not currently hold an Aboriginal art collection and will rely on the consultative powers of Arrente woman Sera Bray to obtain art for the collection for the £130m project, due to start once the design consultation process ends late in 2023. As it is a sacred women's site, this may proof difficult.
For ABC article go to:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-14/national-aboriginal-art-gallery-new-name-flagged/101433054
Doris Stuart Kngwarreye on her home country. (ABC News: Kirstie Wellauer)